Reply #31: Definition of TG [View All]

A transgendered person is a person who either (a) feels that they are 'trapped in the wrong sexual body' and/or (b) is unable and/or unwilling to present the social signifiers that people rely on to distinguish biological sex.

For example, a man who decides that he is in the wrong body and has sex reassignment surgery is a transsexual. Transsexuals are innately transgendered.

Transsexuals women may be lesbian (desiring women) or heterosexual (desiring men).

There are also transgendered people who are born male, not interested in sex reassignment surgery, but who have decidely feminine expression: drag queens, trannygirls who take estrogen but do not want 'bottom surgery', and other feminine peoples born in male bodies.

There are also those who are born in genetic female bodies who are transsexual, they have sex-reassignment surgery (SRS), go on T (testosterone) and have chest reconstruction.

There are also a range of transgendered people in the lesbian community: drag kings, and transgendered butches. TG butches may or may not have surgery. The key is to be comfortable in one's body.

My partner is decidedly masculine. Not in a 'cutesy' tomboy way, but in a 'getting thrown out of the women's restroom by law enforcement' way. He will answer to either masculine or feminine pronouns, but prefers masculine pronouns. He feels as emotionally uncomfortable in a dress as my straight male friends do. He would like to have chest reconstructive surgery because he feels an almost neurological disconnect with his breasts.

There are also interesexed people (who have been genitally mutilated by science throughout the 20th century) who are biologically neither male nor female.

Transgendered people have existed throughout history: as 'two-spirited' native americans (called berdache by whites), British mollies, Greek viragos and mollises, the Hijras of India, the travesti of Latin America, and on and on and on...

Sorry if you are TG in some way that has not been included here!
There are many ways to be transgendered and transness defies labels in myriad ways.

:)